Well, its been a big week here in Australia terms of both international and domestic politics with the ending of the APEC summit and the recent pre-election opinion polls being released today showing a further drop in support for John Howard’s re-election.

The papers here are wrapping up on the outcomes of the APEC summit, and the biggest aspect being reported about is the decisions or lack of specific decisions made around Climate Change.Those in the community who were wanting specific targets set or caps agreed to had to go home disappointed, and its been quoted that perhaps their expectations where too high for this event.Ive taken a few of the comments from the press and added my own thoughts to this. Here’s the link to the full Sydney Declaration on Climate Change and Energy

1. Each country has agreed that climate change is a problem and needs to be addressed. This builds momentum before a series of international meetings on climate change being hosted by the US later this month and the next UN climate meeting in Bali in December.

Well its nice to get a stake in the ground…only took 10 years plus of hammering.

2. The declaration sets out tangible responses on protecting forests and improving energy technology. Australia has offered $30m to an Indonesian forestry initiative to prevent deforestation. With the goal of increasing forest cover in the region by at least 20 million hectares of all types of forests by 2020.

Deforestation is probably one of the most critical issues in terms of loss of habitat, because once its gone it takes a significant period to return to its original state. Also with climate change putting pressures on habitats, the removal of migration corridors means that when a habitat changes, species are unable to move which increases the possibility of extinctions.But are we trying to continue Australia’s historic approach to emissions reduction by advising our neighbours to do the same? My concern here is that Australia has stabilised most of its emissions since 1990 through a reduction in land clearing, not through industry action.

3. We also saw the increasing negotiations regarding the US led global nuclear energy partnership which which aims to expand the safe use of nuclear technology.

What can you say, of course this is going to continue, its all to obvious when Australia has rich supplies in uranium, big business and governments that will benefit from the rewards and you probably need less than a 100 lines of excel spreadsheet to model the economic model. But can you blame a government that sees in the next 20 years the cost of providing healthcare to an aging population, paying for infrastructure and and keeping those budget surpluses do anything different?

4. Other positives were that the goals are to reduce energy intensity by at least 25 percent by 2030 from the 2005 level.

This is certainly a step in the right direction, but probably no where near enough what is required. Take for instance the built environment. In a recent study by Deacon University in Australia, they determined over a 3 year study that the built environment demands 40-50% of global energy, consumes 40% of non-renewable resources, generates 40% of landfill waste and uses 30% of fresh water reserves. The good news, 33% of energy related CO2 emissions are generated by energy use, 29% of that can be cut by existing tech by 2020 (new scientist August) . So there’s a 10% reduction right there, by 2020, and most of these initiatives can be done with paybacks of around 2-5 years.

I was recently down in Launceston, Tasmania, presenting at the Australian Direct Property Group with my colleagues from Thinc Projects on achieving sustainability in the property industry. Most of the activity in the sector around green building is not being driven by the government, but by business now wanting to be seen as being green, and investors and tenants driving the process. So lets hope that government in the coming months can step up to the plate more with assistance and stronger policy in this area.

In all of this, and its outside the scope of today’s blog but its probably worthwhile to step through if you have some time and do your own checking of the declaration against the stabilisation wedges and see what progress is being made. See if you can map out how far we have managed to get from these talks towards the required solutions.

Nick Bruse is runs Strike Consulting, a growth venture consultancy specialising in the cleantech sector and hosts The Cleantech Show, a weekly podcast of interviews with leaders involved in clean technology research, entrepreneurship, commentary and investment.

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Cutting energy intensity will do nothing if economic growth leads to increases in actual output of greenhouse gases. There needs to be hard targets in reduction of greenhouse gases. I'm not confident anyone in APEC really gets it. Our "leaders" need to examine the full cycle costs of inaction on this issue. A true accounting would reveal that the cost of continuing on the same path far exceeds costs to develop and implement new sources of alternative energy.The problem is the entrenched corporate interests pushing their interests ahead of the general public. We can parallel big tobacco to big energy. Their goals? Obfuscate, delay and deny. The truth does not matter.